News media business BY ROY GREENSLADE Finley Peter Dunne, the son of two Irish immigrants to the United States, was responsible for one of the most famous aphorisms about journalism. It comforts the afflicted, he wrote in 1902, and afflicts the comfortable. I’ve lost count of the times I have heard fellow hacks repeat that line as justification for what they do. Or, to be more accurate, what they are supposed to do. For there is a wide gap between promise and performance. Plenty of people, perhaps a majority – and probably an overwhelming number of republicans – would say it’s a chasm.
In their view, journalists are guilty of afflicting the afflicted while comforting those who deserve no comfort, such as politicians, corporate business moguls, faceless bureaucrats, and the wealthy elite. They scorn the claim that journalists are holding the powerful to account, arguing that they are instead responsible for building and maintaining a narrative which justifies an unacceptable status quo. I’m not about to disagree with that viewpoint having argued it so often myself. I particularly recall doing so in the pages of An Phoblacht in the 1980s when
media coverage of our struggle was consistently negative, embroidered with distortions, and laced with lies. Journalists were, if not our enemies, then certainly not our friends. And friendship hasn’t exactly blossomed since. But it’s wrong, wholly wrong, to damn all journalism and all journalists. Perspective, as ever, is all. In certain places, at certain times, journalism has had a revolutionary impact. It has helped to bring about political change, saved lives, highlighted iniquity, overturned injustice, ridiculed the powerful and, on occasion, brought them down.
is failing audiences
anphoblacht UIMHIR EISIÚNA 4 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 4
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